Great Learning Starts With Communities

Great Learning: Creating a sense of organizational community helps increase employee engagement and retention in a multigenerational workforce.

With today’s multigenerational workforce, ranging from traditionalists to the baby boomers to Generations X and Y, learning leaders face the challenge of building continuity along with individual development amid a divide in workplace values.

Each generation holds a unique set of values. Traditionalists, those born before 1946, value core skills and hard-nosed standards; the baby boomers, born just after ’46, value hard work and multi-tasking; and Generations X and Y embrace the development of technology. Each is tasked with coming together for a common purpose: to work toward the success of a business.

Add in a perilous economic climate, where workers are consistently worried amid job cuts and corporate restructuring, and learning leaders feel pressure to bridge these differences toward continued development, greater training and success.

“Those are all realities in today’s marketplace that organizations have to struggle with,” said Susan Cain, a partner at the Corporate Learning Institute, a Chicago-area learning and development training consultancy. “What we’re talking about is not only building community and communities of people that can practice and collaborate together, but also developing the concept of individual job enrichment.”

Building greater job enrichment will grow more important as baby boomers begin to retire and younger generations take over, Cain said. Because Generations X and Y require greater meaning and engagement in their work, Cain said learning leaders will have to put more emphasis on development that builds continuity within organizational ranks.

Building more effective corporate communities, whereby these divergent groups learn to come together on a deeper level, offers a plausible solution for learning leaders. Effective community building unites a workforce, increases employee engagement and enhances the opportunity for continued learning and leadership development, Cain said.

The Corporate Learning Institute is one of many companies that work to help organizations develop a greater sense of community. The institute champions a work environment where employees connect on a more personal level, developing a sense of openness, belonging and honesty.